


One More

by reggievass



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Awesome Pepper Potts, BAMF Pepper, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Female Protagonist, Gen, Nightmares, POV Female Character, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2012-11-25
Packaged: 2017-11-19 11:16:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/572677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reggievass/pseuds/reggievass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody ever asks Pepper how many people she’s killed. Then again, no one seems to think she’s killed anyone at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One More

Nobody ever asks Pepper how many people she’s killed. Then again, no one seems to think she’s killed anyone at all.

The answer to the number question is one, by the way.

If you had predicted that five years ago, she would have thought it highly unlikely. Pretty much impossible, if you told her the person wouldn’t be Tony.

It’s the kind of thing no one thinks about when it comes to the infamous Pepper Potts. Not that she wants anyone to ask, really.

One death isn’t a lot for the company and the Co. she keeps, but it is for her.

Because she killed just one person. And he was a very bad person. And she would do it again, even if the results had been less fortunate.

Still, sometimes she thinks about hitting that button and running away on her toes to keep her heels from tripping in the grating.

Tony’s never as alone as he thinks when he makes a sacrifice play.

She told Tony she wouldn’t watch him do this again (because she loved him) because she didn’t want to deal with cleaning up after another self-destructive spiral.

That does not, has never and will never mean that she won’t stand beside him, forget that, in front of him when the danger is anything other than his own self, and she’ll do her best of it then. Though she’s smart enough to know that in the end, some epiphanies Tony has to reach on his own.

There are things Pepper will do for love of Tony Stark.

Pepper will reach her tiny hands into Tony’s chest to mend him the best she can even if she’s terrified.

She will lead Coulson and his agents to Section 16, and when nothing’s left in her ear but Tony’s shouted instructions she will bring the building down herself even if she thinks it will kill him.

She will jump into a car heading the wrong way down an exploding race track to get Tony his suit even if she’s yelling at him for being an idiot the whole time.

She will demand answers from Justin Hammer, and she will stay until everyone else is clear even if she can’t knock heads against a desk like Natasha can.

Still, in her life so far, Pepper killed only one person.

One is nothing next to the number killed by Tony, by Rhodey, by Coulson, Natasha or any of the Avengers, though they don’t talk to her about it.

(It is one more than Happy Hogan, but he’d never want anyone to think he was less than deadly.)

None of this means she doesn’t have nightmares too sometimes.

Most of her dreams are about Tony literally or metaphorically exploding, but those have been her norm since her first week working for him.

In the only dream she classifies a nightmare, she is alone with a big red button and Obadiah Stane.

Obadiah who had his own password for JARVIS just as she has and Rhodey does.

(Coulson does too, even if Tony loves to squawk and blame her for security breaches.)

Obadiah who told her Tony needed time to get his head on straight, just like Rhodey did, so she believed them until bullet holes showed up on the suit Tony told her wasn’t a weapon.

Obie who brought pizza back from New York after bad meetings and played piano in the living room while Pepper did damage control with juggling laptops.

Obie who was the last person around in Tony’s life who had been there when he was a kid.

Obie who went insane. Or maybe didn’t go insane at all. She’s not sure which is more terrifying.

Sometimes, she dreams it’s Obie paralyzed from his own tech like he left Tony right before he pulled his reactor out. She stands there in the dream watching Stane’s skin pale and his mouth gape as his jaw relaxes. He is completely helpless, and she could call someone, the police, Tony, Rhodey, Happy, Coulson, Natasha, SHIELD, anyone.

She could call someone, but she never does.

She stands by and watches him try to move as the veins in his bald skin bulge.

She always pushes the button.

And Obadiah Stane?

He burns, and he’s not in the armor this time as his paralyzed body twitching with current throws off blue sparks, but his yell sounds just like she remembers.

Pepper knows dreams can mean both more and less than people think. She also knows it’s true; she would kill Stane again.

She could tell herself it was the only way to save Tony, that Obadiah was the kind of villain they write books about, that he was never going to stop, and that’s all true.

But Pepper knows herself. She keeps a policy of brutal honesty. She doesn’t want anyone finding out her secrets before she knows to protect them.

She knows if Obadiah were completely helpless, but she could kill him without endangering the life of anyone else, she would still do it. Because it was so very personal how he hurt them, the little family they welded together, and Pepper protects what belongs to her.

(Don’t tell Tony, but her name’s already on the lease. Really, he signs anything she puts in front of him.)

Pepper doesn’t usually get so maudlin about it, so morbid. It doesn’t fit her position. It doesn’t fit the life she’s building herself, the character she braces on red soled foundations to hold up the fragile framework of her family.

But today is the anniversary of her own revelation.

It’s a thing you can’t forget once you know it, that you’re a killer.

Five years ago today, Pepper Potts realized what she would do for the people she cares about.

Today, she approves SI press releases on the subject, some magazines will run small articles and one business show is doing a segment on the wonderful role model Stane was.

All of these are to a lesser extent criticizing her for not being Tony for not being Obie for not being Howard.

She approves the releases because it’s important.

The public thinks Stane died in a plane crash a week after Tony’s Iron Man coming out conference, and they think they know who Obie was to Tony. It would seem odd, cold even, for Tony not to express grief at the reminder.

Tony never keeps track of days though, so she’ll handle this for him.

JARVIS will edit any mention of Obadiah from the news if Tony happens to fall in front of a television with free time.

Natasha will forestall any well-intentioned, but unwelcome sympathy from the other Avengers who still don’t know the whole truth.

Rhodey will sit with Pepper in one of the countless tower guest rooms, and no one will tell Tony she’s in the building at all until she gets drunk.

Very drunk indeed, she’ll say as she watches _Breakfast at Tiffany’s_ with Rhodey, and they’ll both laugh.

Phil will come sit with her too because she’s forgiven him for dying.

(It’d be unfair if she didn’t, she’s forgiven Tony for it five times now.)

Besides, Phil loves Audrey Hepburn.

Pepper will sit with her vodka martini that turns to vodka from the bottle and olives shaken from the jar straight into her mouth.

She won’t tell Tony, because honestly, he just makes everything about himself, and this is one day of the year she takes for her own.

Pepper will sit between other people who have killed for this family.

It’ll be half guilt from Rhodey for doubting her when she first said it was Obadiah, for telling Obie about the reactor in the first place.

It’ll be half guilt from Coulson for not bringing enough backup the first time, for not telling her when Tony was dying, for letting her think he was dead himself.

Regardless of all that, mostly it’s just family.

That and the assurance that she’s not insane. Or if she is insane, she’s not alone.

Pepper Potts will never again have to be alone with her hard-won truth.

No matter the number of people she killed, love means she is always willing to make the number one more.


End file.
